I love the use of the noun "purchase," meaning, not something you buy, but "A means of increasing power or influence" or "An advantage that is used in exerting one's power." That's the 5th definition of the noun in the 3d edition of the American Heritage Dictionary. Here are some other, related definitions:

2. A grip applied manually or mechanically to move something or prevent it from slipping.

3. A device, such as a tackle or lever, used to obtain mechanical advantage.

4. A position, as of a lever or one's feet, affording a means to move or secure a weight.

You get the idea of the image Tribe had of Kennedy's brain? If you read the whole letter — PDF — you'll see that Tribe thought Justice Souter had "purchase," and he was worried that without Souter, Kennedy would roll toward the "Roberts/Alito/Scalia/Thomos wing of the Court." He thought Elena Kagan — and not Sonia Sotomayor — would operate — as a tackle or lever? — to move "Tony Kennedy's mind."

Kagan, Tribe said, had a way of "gently but firmly persuading a bunch of prima donnas to see things her way in case after case." Of course, he was referring to the prima donna professors at Harvard Law School, and mainly talking about new faculty appointments, which is quite different from persuading Supreme Court Justices about interpretations of law. It's one thing to build a law school community where professors can spout diverse ideologies and still feel like it's a happy, functioning institution. It's quite another to amass votes for a legal proposition that produces an outcome in a case and binds all the courts in the United States.

And if the target of a light touch knows that the most powerful man in the world has selected that approach to prying his brain into a particular political direction, that target ought to become highly vigilant and not get played.

... I think it's clear that a Justice Kagan would be a much more formidable match for Justice Scalia than Justice Breyer has been... in the kinds of public settings in which it has been all to easy for Scalia to make his rigid and unrealistic formalism seem synonymous with the rule of law and to make Breyer's pragmatism seem mushy and unconstrained by comparison.

Tribe says Kagan will be "simultaneously progressive yet principled, pragmatic and yet constrained." That sounds like pragmatism. How does it not "seem mushy" like Breyer's pragmatism? Because it's asserted to be "constrained," while Breyer's pragmatism "seem[s]... unconstrained"? Because it's progressive — steadily aimed in one direction and not more subtly varied?

I'm sure Justice Kennedy doesn't need to be tipped off to this political scheme to clamber over the crusty crags of the convolutions of his brain. But Tribe's letter is amusing reading nonetheless.

Poor Larry Tribe. He helped usher Obama through law school and his thanks is to sit in the basement of the White House, writing memos about former Harvard Law School colleagues' suitability for the job he's always wanted for himself.

"He helped usher Obama through law school and his thanks is to sit in the basement of the White House, writing memos about former Harvard Law School colleagues' suitability for the job he's always wanted for himself."

That's still better than being a (mostly) unpaid performer for the tubes.

The condescending tone in his letter about everyone he discusses is pitch-perfect. You can see O nodding in agreement, and rejecting Tribe's advice for his first pick only because of the political argument for appointing Sotomayor. Tribe really knows his audience, in the way only a convinced narcissist can know another. Was he dictating it by reading from O's teleprompter?

Charles Portis used the verb "to lay purchase" in his novel "True Grit."He was describing the thoughts of Mattie, the young female protagonist, who had fallen into a hole and wished to reach out and "lay purchase" on an old gun to fend off a snake IIRC.

Another nugget demonstrating Prof Tribe's ability to evaluate legal minds: “I thought of him much more as a colleague” than a student, said Laurence Tribe, a law professor at Harvard for whom Mr. Obama worked. “I didn’t think of him as someone to send out on mechanical tasks of digging out all the cases.” Other students could do that, Professor Tribe added.

"What might be even more embarrassing is 1. concluding that the Kentucky Head Stomp Fest was a vast liberal conspiracy and then 2. claiming the stompee deserved it anyway. Now that's tacky."

Also embarrassing would be implying that I'd written that when of course I had not.

An apology is in order, Susan. There is a huge difference between asking a question where the evidence is thin and making a "conclusion." And the conclusion you suggest that I made isn't even the substance of the *question* I asked. Moreover, there is a huge difference between saying an assault victim "deserved" something and saying her behavior is relevant to assessing the mental state of the attacker.

Really, shame on you for that. You owe me an apology. If you do not apologize, you will be affirming your intention to misread and misrepresent what you have read.

Look at the bottom of the letter, where Tribe asks for a position to be created at the DOJ for him.

Tribe's just saying that he's resigned himself to not being picked for the Supreme Court himself. What good is having your former star student in the White House if he's not going to nominate you to the Supreme Court? Suggesting Obama pick Kathleen Sullivan -- former law prof and Con Law casebook author -- was as close as he dared hint his dream.

Tribe was just saying, "No hard feelings; I'm happy to help out in any way I can."

Then he started to sob, painful, wracking sobs that had the secretary asking him if everything was all right.

Tribe is pissed that he didn't get the nod. Afterall, he did cover for the Non Natural Born Obama during the Resolution 511 hearings. He gave a purposefully vague, but correct definition of Natural Born Citizen to that committee, i.e. "One born WITHIN the TERRITORY and ALLEGIANCE of a Nation."Catch that? There are 2 requirements,

1) BIRTH WITHIN a nation's Territory.

2)BIRTH WITHIN a nation's ALLEGIANCE.

Now, Obama admits himself, at "Fight the Smears", that he was born a British Citizen and OWED ALLEGIANCE to Britain. Curiously Obama only says he is "Native Born" at that site, not "Natural Born."

Blood and Soil, hmmm sounds familiar. Oh yeah, Vattel: "The Natives are those born in a country of parents who are it's citizens". That way one is born in the US AND has no foreign allegiance at birth (WITHIN the Allegiance)is a Natural Born Citizen!

It also dovetails perfectly w/ Federalist #68, which said that to prevent foreign influence the "Chief Magistrate" would be a "child of our own." (sic)Obviously if Obama was born of an alien father (never of resident either, only here on student visa) he could not be a "child of our own".

Yeah, Tribe is pissed. He has committed treason against the very document in which he is an expert, said nothing when Resolution 511 gave us 2 ineligible candidates, and 2 lightweight Leftist Ideologues get his seat.

1. Very good point about the wishy-washy nature of Tribe's mention of the need for a "progressive" direction. Prof. Franck has valuable analysis of the point here: http://www.nationalreview.com/bench-memos/251378/professor-tribe-and-pragmatically-progressive-judging-matthew-j-franck

2. On Volokh I have some comments on why this letter will destroy whatever's left of Tribe's Supreme Court practice:http://volokh.com/2010/10/28/tribe-v-sotomayor/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+volokh%2Fmainfeed+(The+Volokh+Conspiracy)#comment-1028913

3. Who the hell leaked this? A conservative would have leaked it months ago, to hurt Kagan, and a liberal would never leak it. It being leaked now makes no sense.

I want to give Justice Kagan a chance. And she wants to get eveyone else to give her a chance she will have to spice up her wardrobe. So she will have to be like Mindy Cohn from the "Facts of Life" and come to Lee Lee's Valise.

You can see Mindy shopping at Lee Lee's this Friday October 39th at 9pm on TlC'S "What Not To Wear."

I didn’t think of him as someone to send out on mechanical tasks of digging out all the cases.

"He was pretty hopeless at mechanical tasks. I remember this time he got his car stuck in a ditch. Well, a few students from the business school saw him and offered to help, but he snapped that it was 'his car', so they just stood and watched. He kept gunning the engine, which generally meant the wheels would just spin, but sometimes they would find purchase and get him deeper into the ditch."

"So Barack's down in this ditch, and - he's just amazingly fluent with swear words, and of course thanks to his multicultural upbringing he knows the best parts of several Hawaiian and Indonesian dialects, Swahili, Urdu, and I thought I heard some Arabic - between his yelling and the engine roar, he attracted quite a crowd. The B-school guys decided it was the funniest thing they'd ever seen, and they were waving their friends over; a few undergraduates were attracted to the noise; and it must have been 4th of July weekend, because some older people dressed up like Ben Franklin and Betsy Ross showed up from somewhere. Next thing you know, a street vendor shows up and starts selling frozen lemonades or some such thing to everybody. It was a real carnival atmosphere."

"At some point, Barack runs out of gas, so he gets out and starts trying to push the car, poor guy. And the crowd just explodes. He didn't always handle criticism as gracefully as he does now, and I think that really bothered him. Plus when he tried to bum some frozen lemonade, they told him, 'buy one yourself', which he didn't like."

"Finally he starts trying to push the car backwards, and everybody yells, 'Put it in R!' - and he won't do it! He insists it has to stay in drive! Damnedest thing you ever saw."

"He helped usher Obama through law school and his thanks is to sit in the basement of the White House, writing memos about former Harvard Law School colleagues' suitability for the job he's always wanted for himself."

That's still better than being a (mostly) unpaid performer for the tubes.

What does the 42nd POTUS have to do with it?

Lem said...

Hey Trooper check out Ana María Polo from Telemundo Caso Cerrado.. family law

Que linda!!!

(I'd do the upside down exclamations, but I can't trust character mapping here)

WV "euperp" What McGarrett says these days in lieu of "Book 'im, Danno".

I thought you were being tough on Tribe, but then I read Glenn Greenwald's post, which makes a persuasive argument that he's a pathetic sellout:http://www.salon.com/news/department_of_justice/index.html?story=/opinion/greenwald/2010/10/29/tribe

My guess is the leak came from Tribe's side. None of that should ever have been written anyway. It insults too many people and all of it is unnecessary. I could rewrite that letter to communicate what he says without saying any of it explicitly the way he does.

That letter is unprofessional in the extreme. Tribe shouldn't have written it and Obama shouldn't have to have it in his White House archive. Anything advice like that should have been verbal, if given at all.

I'd be willing to place a small wager that the source will turn out to be in DoJ in Tribe's office. It wouldn't surprise me if Tribe has shown it to people there.

Dubya wanted to pick someone for the Supreme Court who'd punch above his weight -- someone whose influence on the other justices (including but not limited to Anthony Kennedy) would, over time, magnify the importance of Bush's choice.

So he picked the best appellate advocate in the United States -- John Roberts.

That's a sound strategy. But if you've listened to Kagan's oral argument on behalf of the U.S. government in the Citizens United case, you'll almost certainly understand why she was widely mocked and derided. However good a dean or law professor she'd been, she showed no skill at persuading appellate judges. If, over the years, Roberts' genuine skill at persuasion will give his selection disproportionate (and positive) impact, then Kagan's deficits in that same ability are going to end up meaning that her nomination was less consequential to the nation, and certainly less shrewd (on the part of the nominator).

Can't believe there's not a Raising Arizona reference here yet: (paraphrasing somewhat) "Her loins were a barren rock where my seed could get no purchase." It's the entire reason for the ensuing storyline. :-)

Since it's so close to the election, I couldn't help but compare Tony Kennedy to all of those independent voters we have in our land who sometimes lean left and sometimes right. You know who I mean. Those people who, when polled, say they are "undecided". It's the very same people that political advertising is attempting to sway, and that same group of people who determine the winner of nearly every election we have in the USA.

Could we POSSIBLY appreciate a lighter touch and a more open dialogue without those predictably extreme echo chamber effects that the left and right have perfected?

Something tells me that if independents were polled on that question, they'd have a ready answer.

Her crime? She moderated a League of Women's Voters debate and stuck to the pre-arranged format. Some people in the audience demanded on the Pledge of Allegiance and it was off the format so she said so.

Yeah, that's reason to target her in a national news show.

Conservatives are creeps. It's like a bunch of Maoists during the Cultural Revolution.

Conservatives are creeps. It's like a bunch of Maoists during the Cultural Revolution.

Come on. Not every conservative is a Byron Williams, listening to Glenn Beck, putting the pieces together, then driving to SF to attack the human rights-supporting Tides Foundation. And even if there were more, the Highway Patrol was able to subdue him, unfortunately not till after he shot it out with them.

Tribe indeed is less a constitutional scholar than a constitutional deconstructionist. When Roe v Wade was passed both he and Alan Dershowitz, another constitutional scholar both called the decision WRONG.

But it doesn't matter to these legal charlatan Progressives. The legal ends will always justify the "legal corruption" of the means.

Reading Professor Tribe's letter, the tone struck me as astonishingly the same as C.S. Lewis' hilarious "The Screwtape Letters", in which "Screwtape", a senior demon in the devil's bureaucracy writes a series of advice letters to his nephew, a junior level demon, "Wormwood".

The regular theme is how the uncle (now Professor Tribe) is disappointed (once again) that his nephew (now President Obama) has ineptly tempted or failed to seize an opportunity to corrupt his earthly "Patient" and claim him for all eternity.

Mr. Lewis was funny.

Professor Tribe's advice to the President of the United States nauseates:

"I think it very important that you view [the next Court nomination] as an opportunity to lay the groundwork..." [for a further corrupted Court]. (Those last words are my interpretation)

"If you were to...."

"Bluntly put...."

"When [the next chance comes], you might consider..."

I was amused that good justices have familiar first names "Steve" and "Ruth" and "Tony", but the Enemy are the "Roberts/Alito/Scalia/Thomas wing"

Of course, I recommend "The Screwtape Letters" highly to all of your readers.

And finally, can anyone explain what is lurking behind Professor Tribe's expression in paragraph 5? [We are using the Supreme Court] ".., in advancing a humane and yet suitably cautious conception of the rule of law....."